A week later saw Frances’ departure from Porthlew.
“I wish you were coming too, Rosamund,” she said, unaware how cordially her guardian was endorsing the wish.
Rosamund said: “Write and tell me all about everything. Good-bye, darling.”
Not even to her sister would she admit the mixture of defiance and sentimentality which had prompted her refusal to visit the Wye Valley.
“Not until I go there for good,” she told herself dreamily.
It was the expression of a perfectly unconscious egotism.
X
FRANCES and her hostess found themselves in perfect harmony. It did not occur to Frances that the eight years which had transformed her from a child to a young girl had changed Lady Argent a great deal more. Discursive she had always been, but her talk had now become almost wandering, and her always gentle volubility had increased surprisingly. The amusement, tempered by slight dismay, with which Ludovic listened to his parent’s verbal flights, was quite unshared by Frances. Lady Argent talked about the Catholic Church, about which Frances wanted to learn all that she could, and each was serenely content.
“I haven’t any scruples, dear, about telling you all that you want to know,” Lady Argent unnecessarily informed her guest, “because dear Bertie is so broad-minded and honest herself that I know she wouldn’t mind. And it seems only fair to counteract all those dreadful years that you’ve spent with Protestants, poor child, who have such very strange ideas about the Faith. Like Indulgences, you know—so terribly misunderstood, I always think—paid permission to commit sin for a hundred days, I’ve even heard people suggest—ignorant Protestants, you know.”
“They are not all as ignorant as that,” justice compelled Frances to observe.